


All Save One

by AssistedRealityInterface



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Cloning Blues, F/F, Identity Issues, Trans Female Character, Trans Solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 04:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14205378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssistedRealityInterface/pseuds/AssistedRealityInterface
Summary: Ava ruminates on her name, her gender, and her identity with a little help from some friends. Sara is supportive.





	All Save One

**Author's Note:**

> Ava's struggle with her identity really resonate with me as a trans person, so I am just going to be writing fics like this forever.

Ava stands in front of the bathroom mirror and rubs her jaw, cracking it like she’s got something to prove to the laser-smoothed skin glistening before her, fresh from the shower she’d just had at the end of a totally normal day as a totally normal person with a totally normal girlfriend who was in love with her, in love with this  _ person. _

She is a person. She has to be a person. There must be something real behind this rotting feeling in her head, mold making her thoughts fuzzy, her whole head thick and full of spores. She is too aware of self awareness, feeling the hang of her head, the press of her breasts against her shirt, her penis damp against her thigh, and her guts heave in spite, churning listlessly.

“Who would choose to make something like this?” she asks, her body a hypothetical, a psychic side-stepping of the shape of herself and the weight of her body, a noose both hollow and heavy. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense. It must be so much trouble to put together something that feels...incomplete.”

They’d called her the perfect woman. Which was weird, racist, and exhausting. Somebody must have thought she was perfect. 

“For what?” 

The question goes unanswered. Her chest aches. She has to talk to someone, but Sara, her prince, her brave and noble prince, is not going to know what to say. She’s not sure anyone is going to have the right words if she doesn’t.

“I feel like statistically, the percentage of people who are clones and trans is pretty much nil,” she jokes into the empty space. “Gideon? Hey, question. Were all the other...ones, were they trans like me?”

“ _ Ms. Sharpe? I’m sorry. I do not know. There is a restriction on my ability to access that information.” _

“Yeah, sounds about right.” She tucks back her hair and stares at her smooth, silky throat, and thinks idly about slitting it open and pulling herself inside out to start over and see if she could turn her body roundabout or sideways to make it better. 

She has to talk to someone. She has to talk to someone who she kind of definitely hates. Still. He’s her best shot.

This is how Ava Sharpe finds herself at John Constantine’s apartment, doesn’t even flinch at Gary curled up on the couch watching  _ She-Ra _ re-runs, and grabs John by the scabbed, musky lapels of his coat.

“Tell me what you know about true names.”

John just cocks his head. “Did you just get out of the shower? You smell awfully nice, pet.”

“I will skull-fuck you with your own tongue and teeth, and that is a promise.”

“Hot,” John concedes, scattering his fingers triumphantly over hard-won stubble, his fingers searching, flexing. “There a reason you ask?”

“I’m,” Ava rubs the side of her face. “Do you know when I decided on my name?”

“It’d be weirder if I said yes, I think, yeah?”

“Shut up, it’s rhetorical.” Ava takes a desperate breath. “I was twelve years old and I’d never liked my other name, it never fit, and I was always trying and changing and sifting through names like sand, but they all were  _ wrong _ still, they said something about me that I didn’t know, didn’t want. After all that, I couldn’t pinpoint what I wanted.”

She won’t look at John or Gary, can’t, and she’s too aware of her body again, still a little damp from her shower, her clothes sticking to her skin and making her want to scream. “I just sort of  _ found _ Ava. I don’t even have a sticking point in my head from where it came. It just  _ was _ me. And I  _ became _ me . So it always was Ava.”

Her eyes are blurring. Factory defect. Did the warranty expire on her already or could she just exchange herself and try again and maybe fix the  _ knowing _ part, the being something different in the hollow press of the noose, the skin tightening around her and fraying until she snapped-

“I’m always Ava,” she says. “Always been Ava. And now I know why, and it’s because I’m a fucking robot. Clone. Whatever. I literally don’t give a shit.”

John pauses. Raises his eyebrows, puts his hands in his pockets, and wrinkles his nose, before he finally asks, “Huh. Were you gonna tell me that sometime, love?”

“Sara made me swear a blood oath I wouldn’t,” Gary says, skipping to the next episode of  _ She-Ra. _ “You know, Ava, she kind of looks like you. I think it makes sense you’re a secret princess. Like She-Ra or Princess Serenity.”

“Being a secret royal is trans culture,” John says, and he and Gary both share a grin, but Ava’s eyes still hurt and her warranty has long expired so she doesn’t, can’t laugh right now. She stares at the floor and clenches her fists, grateful for the sting of her fingernails scraping her palms as a distraction from her skin scraping against her soul.

“Now I know why,” she says. “I was always Ava because I wasn’t me. It’s not my real name anymore, is it? It’s just a f-fucking, a fucking, uh, company  _ brand.  _ Like I’m a fucking American Girl doll, son of a  _ bitch, _ there’s six fucking hundred of me and I can’t have my own name it doesn’t even  _ belong  _ to me  _ I don’t even belong to me-- _

“Do you know how common the name John is?”

She jerks her head up, her brain snapping its focus back to the problem at hand. “Pretty common. Don’t have specifics, but it’s a Biblical name, so it’s easy and convenient. Plus, family heritage.”

“Right, an uncle of mine I liked was named John, y’see, so I just started using it and it stuck,” John shrugs. “It fit me like a boyfriend’s old jacket, and I never wanted to try anything else on, even if it was pretty well-used. Metaphorically speaking.”

He makes a face and pads over to the kitchen counter, pulling a set of cracked ceramic mugs out from the cupboard and putting the kettle on. “If you start thinking about why you are who you are, you could go crazy. Self reflection is one thing, but a mirror that reflects endlessly in on itself is a prison, Ava. You’re already feeling trapped in your body. Why trap your mind, too?”

“I’m,” Ava swallows. “I don’t even know if it’s my mind. Or my body. Do all the other...mes feel like this?”

“Don’t know,” John says. “Why, do you think you do?”

Ava frowns. “Should I?”

“You don’t have an answer, yeah? That’s ‘cause you’re not them,” John says. “You’re still you. You still  _ chose _ to be you. Even if you don’t remember how or why, you chose this. And it’s who you are, and that’s just facts. So doesn’t that make it your name, and your body?”

“I was hoping you’d have an answer,” Ava says. “You know, magic and stuff. Don’t you need true names for magic spells or whatever?”

“Eh,” John shrugs. “In my estimation, your real name is whatever makes you come inside for dinner, even if you weren’t born with it. We were all born with a bunch of bones we got rid of, right?”

“They fused as we got older, that’s biology.”

“Sure, whatever,” John shrugs. “The point is, if Sara calls you Ava, you come to her, right?”

“Right,” Ava says. “But all those other Avas-”

“Wouldn’t come if Sara called,” John says, “because Sara calling them Ava means fuck-all to them. But not to you. So that’s your true name, innit?”

“You’re filthy  _ and _ cryptic,” Ava says after a few seconds, before turning to Gary and making a face, pointing back at John. “You fuck this?”

“That’s a crude way of describing intimacy, but yes. He fucks this.” Gary tuts, sucking on his cheek. “Ava, he’s right, you know. You don’t have to know everything about  _ why  _ you are to know  _ who  _ you are, and for what it’s worth? The people who love you know who you are.”

“Biblically, in Sara’s case.”

“The skull fucking offer is still open,” Ava says, folding her arms over her chest. “I...thanks, guys. Sorry for coming over so late. I wasn’t sure if she’d understand. I needed to know I wasn’t crazy.”

“You’re probably crazy, but this isn’t why,” John promises. “Drop in any time, poppet. Sure you don’t want to stay? The kettle’s already on.”

“I need to get back to her,” Ava says, and John just nods. 

“Yes, you do,” he agrees. “But if you need help finding the right words to talk to her, that’s what friends are for, hey?”

“We’re not friends just because you’re fucking my best friend,” Ava says, “but thank you.”

John just gives her a smug little smile as she opens up a portal back to the Waverider, and just before she steps through it she can hear, “Wait, John? Did she say I was her best friend because I am  _ freaking out-” _

The portal collapses, and Ava is back in the bathroom, taking her clothes off with a sigh. She avoids the mirror up until she opens the door to her bedroom with Sara and dares to glance back. Her eyes are shining, and the only person she can see in the mirror is herself.

It’ll have to do. For a start.

Ava rifles through Sara’s dresser and pulls on a tee-shirt, crawling into bed just as Sara opens the door. 

“Ava?”

She lifts her head and answers to her name. “Sara? What’s up?”

“Nothin’, I just got bored watching TV with the fam, decided to come to bed early and cuddle,” she shrugs, taking her pants off and climbing into bed. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Ava sighs, wrapping her arms tight around Sara. “Can you say my name again?”

“Ava,” Sara mumbles. “Ava, Ava, Ava…”

Ava buries her face into Sara’s neck and sighs. “I don’t know what you’ve made of me. I feel like I should be worried.”

“Are you, Ava?”

She searches herself and does not come up wanting. 

“No,” she says. “All that matters is it’s yours, and mine.”

“I am yours,” Sara concedes with a yawn, laying her head on Ava’s chest. She drifts off by degrees, and Ava is left with a lapful of Sara and a head full of thoughts. It doesn’t frighten her, though. She knows who she is now, and that’s a pretty good start.

 


End file.
